[whatever_dude]

This. It seems to me that every few years there's a new "brilliant" idea by an unlikely "inventor" that promises to solve every pollution problem in the ocean forever. But then it becomes clear that the brilliant idea on paper is impossible in practice, on scale, so it never comes down to anything other than wishful CGI.

The media around the topic is too focused on heroics, as if this is a puzzle with a nifty solution that only someone thinking outside of the box can come up with. Reality is less elegant.

[nelsonenzo]

Is it impossible? Or is it because our poor millitary couldn't spare $2Bil to execute on these ideas? Or the global military budget by all countries couldn't spare $20bil to execute?

I think it's very important to distinguish which things are technically not possible, vs we simply chose that our murder machines are more useful in the short term.